Green Options

Bokashi is a centuries-old Japanese method of recycling household food waste into all-natural compost.  By employing a special culture of yeast and other microorganisms, bokashi is a compact, odorless process that takes only days instead of weeks or months. Now the Bokashicycle company is breaking the process out of the kitchen and into a commercial-scale food waste recycling operation, in partnership with New Earth Farm in Hillsboro, Oregon.

New Earth Farm takes in food scraps from Bon Appetit cafeterias on the nearby Intel Hawthorn Farm campus, which provides a significant waste disposal savings compared to disposing the scraps in landfills.  Waste reduction is one goal, and in an even more sustainable twist the composted soil is used to grow crops for Abundant Harvest, a local consumer-supported agriculture (CSA) store.

Fall is officially here! It’s cool and blustery, and we’ve got cozy fabrics on our minds. What better way to welcome in the lovely changing leaves and chilly weather than with some beautiful recycled felt? Feltwerker, a Chicago fiber artist, offers beautiful recycled wool felt scraps that you can incorporate into your Fall and winter projects!

Have you ever considered what becomes of old cellphones when their owners decide it’s time for a new device? Many sit in junk drawers across America, when they could be giving back to the environment by using it to make new products or generate energy.

This is why for 5 years now I have been leading the charge in North America to inspire, enlighten and to try to convince others to respect the environment.

Did you notice something different on the back pages of The Order of the Phoenix? If you live in the Canadian market, you might. The fifth book in the Harry Potter series has something unusual on its back pages. It’s an environmental audit.

The audit, produced using New Leaf Paper’s Eco Audit Calculator, uses New Leaf EcoBook paper, which uses 100% postconsumer waste. This is something new in the book market, which is normally so sensitive to price.

While the paper does cost more than virgin, these costs are offset by the extreme environmental benefits of switching to paper made with 100% postconsumer fiber. Because virgin paper costs less than recycled papers, the book industry has traditionally gone almost exclusively with virgin stocks. But Scholastic decided to make an environmental statement — a big one.

According to the audit, on the 950,000 print run, this simple switch resulted in a savings of 29,600 trees, 12.4 million gallons of water, 20,300 BTUs of energy, 1.4 million pounds of solid waste, and 2.7 million pounds of greenhouse gases. That’s more than just a drop in the bucket.

Although images of giant coal-fired smokestacks and automobile tailpipes characterize greenhouse gas scenarios, a new report proposes a different way of thinking about it – product policy.  Products and packaging contribute 44% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and reduction plans are more likely to succeed if extended producer responsibility (EPR) is made a cornerstone of commerce and environmental policy, the report says.

It’s getting to be almost a cliché here in San Francisco with large music festivals that have either a green backbone or a heck of lot of social justice behind it. Both Outside Lands and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass sit only slightly in the rear view mirror but this weekend we hit the Treasure Island Music Festival to check out the music, happenings and the overall Green flavor.

Considering that several thousand people crammed into the festival space on Treasure Island we think that overall they handled the transportation issue in a pretty Green way. We made our way to the festival via zero-emission Bauer buses that picked most of the masses up at AT&T Park. The only real griping we heard came from East Bay attendees who said that they had to drive or take BART to SF instead of having shuttle buses come to the East Bay as well.

Upon entering the festival we couldn’t help but noticing the Ferris wheel but then after that we spied a pair of decent size solar panels that sat near the entrance. Unfortunately, we couldn’t determine or find anyone who knew what the solar power generated. We’re sure it the energy went toward something beneficial.

“Artists and crafters have always been recyclers, but for many, it has not only become a thrifty choice, it has become a moral imperative. 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse contains a cutting edge collection of the most inventive work being made with re-used, upcycled, and already existing materials. The work in this book ranges from clever and humble personal accessories to unique and important large-scale works of art, including paper art, fashion, jewelry, housewares, interiors, and installations.”

 

As much as I love the coming onslaught of electric cars, they use lots of materials that currently have almost no recycling infrastructure — especially when it comes to their batteries. The numbers vary by the type of lithium-ion battery used, but on average, for every 100 miles of pure-electric range, a lithium-ion battery needs to contain about 15 pounds of lithium.

Although the developed world has had robust systems in place for a long time to deal with the recycling of lead-acid batteries (in the U.S. more than 95% of battery lead gets recycled), the lithium-ion battery has a long way to go to catch up. Granted, lithium-ion batteries are not nearly as toxic as lead-acid batteries and so the urgency of developing a recycling infrastructure is virtually non-existent. In fact, lithium-ion batteries are classified by the U.S. government as non-toxic and “safe” to throw away in the regular trash.

Walking the green walk, isn’t always easy, and the holidays present special challenges. Its not always easy to mess with traditions. Last Thanksgiving I hosted a 100-mile Thanksgiving (I chronicled it in two blog posts on the OrganicMania blog). My attempt to convince my mother-in-law in Tampa that buying condensed milk at my local supermarket for her traditional key lime pie wasn’t really in the spirit of the plan, did not go over so well. That said, I can see a 100-mile Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza or even a 100-mile gift rule.

Tip #1: Source locally. Use local and sustainable produce, flowers, beverages, décor and rentals for holiday parties and meals.

Beyond that, there are two primary categories of activities involved in greening holiday parties and events: Finding ways to minimize the impact of the consumption occurring at the event itself, including food, flowers, beverages, décor, gifts, ect… Finding ways to mitigate the carbon footprint resulting from the airplane travel, car travel and lodging consumed for the event.

The good news is that there are a number of greening strategies that can deal with some or all of these factors that that are sexy and require little to no extra costs.

1. Make sure you have a recycling plan in place. Make recycling easy by having a sufficient number of well-marked recycling bins near where people need them.
2. If you are exchanging gifts (…think Secret Santa), make them green. There are a host of environmentally friendly gifts items ranging from aluminum water bottles to solar powered messenger bags to fair trade chocolates to locally made crafts that could fit the bill.

Do you get your java on the go? If so, what do you do with the paper cup once you’re finished? Throw it in the trash…recycle it…maybe you never gave it much thought. But did you know that 58 billion paper cups are used in the United States every year, and if all these paper cups were recycled, 645,000 tons of waste would be diverted from our landfills? We would be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.5 million mtCO2e (Metric Tonne Carbon Dioxide Equivalent) similar to removing 450,000 passenger cars from the road. It’s amazing to think that something so simple could have such a big impact. Well, it sounds simple but actually the reality is quite complicated.

Global Green USA’s Coalition for Resource Recovery (CoRR) understands the complexity. Their mission is to help businesses increase profits by transforming waste into assets - ultimately, creating a win-win situation for business and the environment. However, CoRR can’t do it alone. It will take all stakeholders in the paper cup supply chain working in collaboration. And it all starts with one white, iconic coffee cup.

A surge in the number of mercury-bearing energy-efficient light bulbs in use in Minnesota is expected to overwhelm recycling programs in the next few years and there’s no plan yet on how to recycle more of them.

Fluorescent light bulbs use only one-fourth as much energy per unit of light produced as incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. One CFL bulb contains 5 milligrams of mercury, about one-fifth the amount in a watch battery.